Does this replace Jira / our requirements tool / our change board? No. Pick a source of truth per artifact
(repo, tracker, or linked) and Claude keeps them linked through the MCP connectors. See docs/legacy-systems.md.
Can Claude approve or merge a PR? No. The project settings deny it, branch protection requires a code owner, and the CI bot token has Developer role only. Findings inform; humans approve.
What stops the agent deploying to production? Three layers: the production-gate hook (needs
RELEASE_APPROVAL), CI environment protection (required reviewers / protected environment), and in regulated
orgs a managed-settings hook engineers cannot disable.
We use allowManagedHooksOnly. Do the plugin hooks still run? No; that key blocks all non-managed hooks.
Re-declare the gates you need in the managed file pointing at a managed copy of hooks/scripts/. See managed-settings.README.md.
GitLab has no @claude mention. How do we get the fix loop? Run /sdlc:babysit <MR> locally, or add a
project webhook on MR notes to a small runner that executes claude -p "/sdlc:babysit <iid>" with a Developer
token. The review itself (sdlc:review job) runs natively on every MR.
Where do intent.md files live if we have many repos? Each product repo’s sdlc/changes/ keeps artifacts
next to the code derived from them. A dedicated intent repo is only worth it when intent spans many repos; in a
monorepo it is a directory.
Why JSON for sdlc.config.json and not YAML? Hooks read it with jq in under 200 ms on any machine with no
Python dependency. monitoring/bands.yaml follows the course and is read by Python (with or without PyYAML).
How do non-engineers use it? claude.ai / Cowork with the GitHub or GitLab connector and the intent and
spec skills uploaded. See docs/non-engineers.md.
Can we run this on Bedrock / Vertex / Foundry? Yes. claude-code-action supports use_bedrock,
use_vertex, use_foundry; for claude -p jobs set the corresponding environment variables. See the
enterprise deployment docs linked from the course resources.
How do we know it is working? /sdlc:metrics. Leading indicators weekly, lagging monthly. docs/metrics.md.
What if a hook blocks something legitimate? The message says the route to approval. Follow it (ticket in the
PR, engineer edits the path, platform team adjusts protectedPaths). Do not work around a hook; that is the point.